


Under gazes of hate and arrogant smiles

by leadingrebel



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Captain Swan AU - Freeform, F/M, Pirate!Emma, Pirates!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:30:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leadingrebel/pseuds/leadingrebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only when he saw the long coat fluttering, covering her back beneath her pale golden hair, he understood. </p>
<p>And he hated her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Take her down!”

The roaring of the Deck’s First Official resounded throughout the entire ship, each member of the crew abandoned their tasks, waiting for a confirmation from their superiors and an order from their Captain.

“To arms!”

It was the Captain’s shout —almost dimmed by the noise of the orders that the admirals immediately started, gesticulating and constantly moving.

The moon so visible in the dawn’s sky. A too peaceful night they had had. Seemed like a bad joke.

The following statement could’ve been unnecessary, when the sound of the wind whipping the sails was halted by the tearing of the fabric by a dagger, when the wood of bow creaked against the metal ornamentation of the enemy ship, when the shouted orders were replaced by panic screams and the shots caused the chaos.

“Pirates!”

·

·

“Liam!”

Killian barely thought that his voice would not be loud enough to rise above the clash of swords and pistols being fired at once, between timeslots.

He was running through the crowd, sword in front, to the sides to end in some enemy’s chest.

He didn’t think he would have to face a pirate boarding in his third voyage as First Lieutenant.

“Liam!”

Soon there wouldn’t be weapons to resound nor enemies to beat down nor crew members to help. He would find himself in deck, surrounded by corpses and bodies writhing to achieve the last thread of life that was left.

Bodies dressed in blue.

Dripping red.

Choking black.

He looked around, he looked at the helm, he looked at his feet and the intact ship in front of him.

He felt a hand in his back and an elbow hit him in the flank, abruptly taking away the air in his lungs. He noticed the cold of a dagger’s blade in his neck before his knees knocked into the ground.

It was done.

They had undergone the  _Jewel of the Realm_.

They had been defeated.

“Well, well,” a voice crooned, soft, dangerous. “We have one alive and kicking”

Killian knew the rest of his crew were in the same situation as his, kneeling in front of the enemy, perhaps hands tied up and weapons removed. Useless.

Fingers closed against his cheeks and lift his head, for him to look at who abashed him.

The green of the eyes he found seemed to want to burn his, when both looks made contact.

Killian didn’t look away.

She smiled knowingly.

"A little parrot told us in this ship rules the family," she stepped to the side, leaving free his field of view, to see his Captain, body faint and bleeding, held up by two corpulent men, skin of the color of the black coffee. "Is always a delight to see how it is attempted to save the other’s life. So much fraternity."

“Set him free!”

The young woman laughed.

"You’re under the commands of a King rotten to his deepest roots," she said, almost with humor. "Why must I leave another slew of idiots behind the skirts of their realm and ignore all this fortune?"

She wheeled a golden coin between her fingers, from the coffer at her side.

"We serve a fair King and protect a dignified realm!"

She wanted to laugh. Scoff, even.

“You will waste your life being under the orders of a King who don’t explain his reasons to send you to hell?”

It was true, the King had commanded them go to a war that turn out to be an ambush and forced them to sail through the  _Circles of the Pirates’ Eyes._  And the  _Jewel of the Realm_ had ended up submitted and boarded.

"My brother trusts him," was his only response.

"And you follow blindly another person?"

"He’s my brother! I trust him with my life!"

"And because of that, he can’t be wrong?"

She turned on her heels, ready to leave.

He felt the blood burn in his veins. The humiliation had reach so deep and it has been able to take out a provision of arrogance he didn’t know he kept. That arrogance didn’t let him be abashed.

"Set him free!" he shouted.

The young woman turned around, almost surprised. She approached him and grasped him by the cheeks with the fingers of a hand, again.

They stared at each other, eyes so fervent and disposed to fight that they feared they’d kill each other.

Killian noticed something change in the green of her iris, lightly swallowed by the black of the pupil in a moment, and, instantly, he knew that in his blue that has induced a change, the same way.

She smirked, with that sadistic smile.

"You’ve got fire. You’d make a great pirate."

Killian wanted to throw her to the sharks.

"Pirate? Like  _you_? Never” he spat the words, as if they were poison in his mouth.

She turned to her mates and raised an eyebrow, amused, making them burst out in laughs and hers followed theirs.

She mouthed something like ‘bloody hell’ between laughs.

"Well, then," she unsheathed the curved sword hanging in her hip and watched it as she talked. "procure some lovely lady and use that fire with that you have between your legs." she pointed the weapon’s end to his crotch, stopping for millimetres.

Killian tried to jump backwards startled, causing more laughs from all the pirate crew and a smug grin from the blonde girl.

She was too young for a pirate life, he thought, she should be around his age. Seventeen.

How had they ended up in this situation?

Children were supposed to be at home, with their parents trying to get them some suitor, comforting them when another one leaves in them their first broken heart, telling them that time they fell in the flour sack when they were trying to walk at the age of one.

She must see something through his eyes and narrowed hers.

Nails clawed deeper in his skin and scratched him with deliberate slowness.

She leaned closer to him.

Her nose caressing his, the green gaze through blonde eyelashes seemed to hold his entire body in subjection. Warm breath against his cheekbones was the only thing that warned him, though it was not her hand the only thing that kept him from moving away.

Their lips collided roughly, without any mildness.

She stroked his lower lip with her tongue, again and again, until he gave her what she wanted and opened his mouth just enough for her to sneak into. She drew the edge of his teeth with her tongue, she spun her head and his, —or maybe it was himself who did it, maybe it was him who lean further, maybe it was him who moaned in pleasure when the tip of her sword touched his member beyond the pants— angles changed and teeth clashing, sighs drowned in each other’s throat.

It was definitely her who bit his lower lip hard without warning, —when she got his guard down— with enough force to see a clear intention to hurt and the consequence of a split lip.

Killian reached for his sword and, in a movement so fast anyone hardly saw it, -the man at his back seemed to have relaxed due to the scene they both had made- he lifted it and crossed the face of his enemy, the taste of blood filling his mouth.

She gathered speed enough to almost avoid the blow.

The blade of the sword got to her right cheekbone, a red line from her cheek to the last eyelashes of her eye.

Silence fell upon all of them.

Lip dripping blood.

Edge of the weapon dripping blood.

She watched him bleed.

He watched her bleed.

Clapping broke through them and tension seemed to fall all on Killian’s shoulders.

"Aye, aye, pirate," boots resound through the ship’s deck, mocking. "Time to leave these _honorable_  men go in peace, with some riches less. And also a few hands less.”

The man, the Captain, glanced at the girl with so much proud in his gaze and it seemed to satisfy her equally.

"You will pay for this." Killian growled in a low voice.

The Captain and the girl turned around, with those arrogant smiles in their lips.

"It’s not me who will sleep tonight having granted my life to a King who sentenced to death three quarters of my crew" respond him.

She just enlarged her smile and the heels of her boots sounded against the wood as she walked away, while the man who held Killian dropped him, and his brother was left in the ground.

Killian recovered rapidly.

Only when he saw the long coat fluttering, covering her back beneath her pale golden hair, he understood.

_It can’t be possible_ , he thought,  _she can’t be her. She’s too young!_

But the question slipped from his lips, nonetheless.

"Who are you?"

The girl turned just enough to looked at him over her shoulder, with a half smile.

And before she spoke, he knew.

It was her.

And he hated her.

"Emma" she answered. "Known and called in the high seas as  _The Swan_ ”

She disappeared behind the scarlet swirl of her coat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killian knew what his new aim would be. 
> 
> He would defy her. He would make her suffer.

_Truth_.

He hated that word.

Because truth had killed his brother.

Their King was rotten to his most recondite entrails and he had wanted to prove so fervently that those revolting pirates were wrong that he hadn’t seen further than his purpose.

He ignored her voice in his head when they returned from their voyage —with empty wooden coffers and the remaining quart of their crew almost moribund—, when he saw the King’s dissembled grimace when they entered the Throne’s Hall, when the monarch meet his eyes —with a dripping rancour gaze.

He ignored it again —maybe with too much difficulty— when the King announced, with an almost anxious voice, that they must set out immediately to the land no one had ever seen.

 _Neverland_.

He could ignore it even when they stepped in the sand of a  _completely_  desert island.

 _A magic plant in a desert island, no threats nor obstacles, and, we are the first ones to think about acquire it?_ , he could hardly believe it.

However, the solid faith of his brother got to dispel the few remnants of the bloody pirates’ warnings.

Because pirates lied. They had no honor. They were unworthy of any trust.

Until his brother fell in his arms. Dead.

And he was left with absolutely no one in the world. Alone.

It was the first time he thought of her.

He thought of how much he hated her, because she had been right.

·

·

·

Killian felt as if he’s born again.

Not proclaim himself a pirate.

But to  _be_  a pirate.

From that moment on, there were countless  _first_  times.

The first time the word ‘Captain’ was accompanied by his name —Captain Killian, because Captain Jones was his brother.

The first time he sailed under the night sky and saw the dawn breaking the calm of the night and he knew, the sea was the thing he loved most in the world.

The first time he saved the  _Jolly Roger_ , without a single scratch —from a sailing through the sea of rocks between the walls of a cliff— after nearly losing her, and he thought that his girl was tied to the sea because she also was what he most loved in the world.

The first time he drank rum, in his brother’s quarters — _his_ ; his brother’s.

The first time he killed —he looked at his hands, covered in blood; his sword, with remains of the man’s clothes; the body, lying at his feet, lifeless— and he didn’t care. Because that man deserved it. And in a kingdom with a rotten King, who will capture the evil ones like him?

The first time he heard the rumor about a cruel, vengeful, deadly man. Of eyes cold as the ice and a constant, sadistic smile. Of a sword as fast as Pegasus and a dagger able to tear a dragon’s skin. They called him  _The Ice of the High Seas_. Captain of a ship that had sailed to the  _Land Never Seen_  and had returned. A man the wisest men avoided defy and the most arrogant men aspired to defeat —maybe the corpses of these last would appear hanging from the highest wooden plank of some tavern.

And when it was heard there was no one in no realm who carried his blood in their veins, Killian knew it was him.

And then, the first time he heard about  _her_.

Years after their encounter. In a tavern far away from the harbor, centre of a village in the mountains forming the cliffs.

"It is said  _The Swan_  is stocking up on riches from the villages in the seaside of the realm, Captain” Smee said, between the crew’s laughs, and glasses of rum running along the table.

Before drinking the last sip of his rum, Killian knew what would be his new aim.

If she wanted the riches of the coast, he would have their fear.

He would defy her.

He would make her suffer.

 _The Swan_  and  _The Ice of the High Seas_.

For the sea.

·

·

·

The  _Ocean Swan_  barely lost time in docking at the port in her next target.

The coffers that the royalty’s ships brought from distant lands —and the Navy hid under fallen trees, in unseen caves, while they got drunk in the nearest tavern—, were soon missing, in their way below deck of a pirate’s ship.

The sailor’s elimination in the tavern was the last step to be able to sail for weeks of luxuries and litres of rum. Maybe they searched for a little fun, too.

"What the bloody h…?" the Captain exclaim when they reached the tavern’s doorway.

The door was half-open. A trail of blood drops covered the wood.

Her boot heel echoed through the stone-wall place when she opened it with her foot.

There was no one.

No one alive, at least.

Blood stained the ground, covering the unmoving corpses with wide open eyes and mutilated members.

There was a man tied up to one of the wooden beams. As she approached, she saw a paper hanging out between the ropes.

She took it rapidly.

**_So long time not seeing each other and you’re late… Bad form, love._ **

"Captain…" someone tried behind her.

Emma growled and buried her sword in the chest of the body at her feet with rage.

She hated him.

·

·

·

The notes came and went, always there where she attacked the coast. Always one step ahead of her.

She didn’t think that he, of all the people, dared to defy her, —even when the waves carried the news to every reef of the ocean: that a Royal Navy’s ship had committed mutiny, rising against their King. That there were new pirates with a curious origin in the waters.

He abashed her.

If he continued, he would ruin her reputation. Her achievements. The respect she herself had earned.

Her pride.

The pride she swore to keep when her Captain announced she was who would take his place after his demise.

He would not take that away from her.

People began to talk, and she wanted to burn every voice that raised and carried rumors.

·

·

·

The next time, she was sure that, for once, she had won.

They had found a small village, between the two important harbors the Army used more often. That was her surprise when she found one of the Royal Navy’s ships in the shore’s dock.

But when they reached the door of the tavern they heard noises from the inside.

There was someone.

Emma smiled with so much satisfaction that the sword shivered in her hand.

She stepped in and her foot hit the arm of an official’s body lying in the ground - maybe her heel went through his ribs as she stumbled, too.

Corpses wearing blue spread around the tables, dripping red and black.

All the shelves in the walls were devoid of rum and any other booze.

She almost screamed, throwing sword strokes to the table’s edge in front of her, splinters jumping to the air.

Muffled sounds reached her from behind the final tables. All the crew turned to there.

Sword to the front, Emma went to the man tied up to the chair the fought to free himself. She cut the white fabric that covered his mouth —with her knife dangerously close to his skin— and when she unfolded it, she saw the note —that maybe she had been expecting.

**_I hope you find the manner that satisfy you most to occupy yourself with him, lass. He has committed the most unjustifiable fault against a pirate. He has denied me my rum._ **

Emma almost laughed.

With that sadistic smiled, with a touch of fun, she looked up at the man.

"You don’t trade with rum?"

He grimaced and spat on the ground.

"I don’t pour to heartless pirates like you."

His tone of voice made Emma laugh.

"Aye, point taken." she ran a hand over her lips. "Well, interject oneself between a pirate and his rum never has a pleasant ending. And as I can see" she pointed at the empty shelves and the voids where the rum kegs were supposed to be "certain pirate has not been pleased with you trying to do it."

The man clenched his jaw.

"Perhaps you want me to take you to him for you to apologize" Emma shrugged.

"Apologize? To a  _pirate_?” he seemed disgusted “You must be under some spell if you think I would”

Emma smirked.

"Well then, you’re all mine."

She raised her knife and slit his throat.

Emma thought she had been right. Killian made a good pirate.

·

·

·

The rumors started.

It was like lighting a spark of fire in a powder keg.

Tales of adventures and sanguinary actions, unseen thefts and not witnessed murders. Massacres found of overnight. Overstatements and murmuring lifted up when a ship dock at the harbor.

Many wanted to embark on a journey to found the  _Assassins of the Taverns_  and the _Thieves of the Hidden Coffers_ , to end their lives.

To Emma’s surprise, the whisperings weren’t as she had expected.

Her reputation wasn’t but exalted.

People didn’t see two pirates that hated one another like nothing else, hunting each other.

No.

People saw the two best known pirates in all the realms, dancing over the rules of their own game.

Because rumors said… that  _The Swan_  and  _The Ice of the High Seas_  shared the control over the waters.

They did not confront one against the other; they saw them in the same side of the board.

Emma thought that perhaps she didn’t hate him that much, after all.

But hating him made it more entertaining.

·

·

·

The first time they encountered was not in the best circumstances.

"Give them no quarter!"

Chaos reigned in the  _Ocean Swan_. Some stupid visionary had wanted to attack the crew -as many others in the past-, though the detail that Army’s members was among them might’ve complicated the situation a little, when Emma and the others returned to the ship.

An ambush.

Emma thought it may be the brother of someone who had been part of the Royal Navy and had end up dead, killed by some pirate —it didn’t matter which one, they, the Royals, don’t care about that—, hence the help of the crazy ones wearing the royal uniform off duty.

She barely knew what happened. When her crew stopped being more than them, when the ship swung on the waves, when the mast broke in two and the sails fell upon them.

She didn’t know when men who weren’t of her crew appeared at her side and didn’t attack her. Nor when a woman crossed the chest of the man who ran towards Emma with her sword, protecting her, and shot her musket to the one who headed to the helm.

She didn’t care; she just wielded sword and dagger against every opponent she saw.

·

·

·

"You acknowledge if some of them attained to hide in the ship?"

Emma put her sword out of a body’s back on the ground and turned to the voice talking to her.

A woman with long, brown hair, blood stained face and pirate clothes almost ripped. The woman who had taken that man out of her way.

"I don’t think they were that bloody stupid"

The woman laughed.

"I’d doubt it; they’ve been stupid enough to defy  _The Swan_.”

Emma grinned, amused.

"I agree."

Emma’s smile suddenly disappeared, because, even with that, they had caused severe damages to the  _Ocean Swan_ , and someone had helped them. She wouldn’t have to need any  _help_.

"In truth, we haven’t helped. We just had a good time killing off the ones you left moribund" the woman said, when she saw Emma’s look.

Emma arched an eyebrow, inquisitive.

"Killian is the same when it comes to his pride and the Jolly Roger…"

"Milah!"

The woman turned around.

Emma looked up.

Killian, with two cuts in the cheek, looked at Emma and then turned to Milah.

"I need you to captain what remains of the  _Ocean Swan_  tonight. Her Captain would keep us company for now. Could you, love?”

Milah turned to Emma, asking for permission.

"I grant it to you; you’ve fought at my side and saved my life."

Milah seemed incredibly pleased.

"It’s an honor…  _The Swan_ ”

Emma thought if she was now part of her ship, she needed to trust her.

"Milah, I’m Emma."

She looked at Emma with that sweet smile of hers and nodded before headed to the crew and commanded to throw the enemies’ bodies overboard with no mercy and to cover the mates fallen in battle.

When Emma looked at Killian the first thing she noticed was his eyes, they were so very different than the last time she has seen that pure blue. The blue she was staring at had a mist of darkness in the deep.

"Good lass you have at your side."

He smiled looking at Milah in the distance.

"She brings happiness to the ship, I bring the rum."

·

·

·

The little patience of Emma faded away when Killian grabbed her arm and dragged her to the Jolly Roger.

She tried to pull away again and again.

Killian ignored her.

She reached for the knife in her boot and wrapped his neck with it from his back.

"Let me go now or you will not go out to deck never again."

She felt him chuckled against her.

"But a ship with no captain is no ship."

She recognized her Captain’s words in his lips and the sudden surprise allowed Killian to spin and pushed her into his quarters.

Their bodies collided with each other; Emma against the wall.

Her knife waving in the air and her wrist wrapped in his hand.

"Missed me so much, love?"

Emma’s growl pretended to sound angry, but when the fingers that imprisoned her wrist clawed at her skin, she remembered.

The sensation of their skins and their lips and their tongues. The taste of his blood when she bit him and the pleasure when his sword cut her cheek.

It had been so much time, too many years. Too many months of simple notes among corpses and rather true rumors.

Too much.

_To the bloody hell._

Emma lifted her head and crushed her lips against his.

Teeth clashed and tongues rubbed. Hands buried in blonde hair and fingers caressed soft, black hair at the back of the head.

Killian drew her jaw with his tongue, a path of curves, impossible to follow, of kisses in her neck. Teeth closed around the fabric under her leather, tearing it apart and leaving uncovered the white skin of her breasts. His tongue taking care of her, his nose dancing between her locks.

Emma attained to get rid of the two long coats, lying on the ground, and considered Killian’s red vest too beautiful to tear it apart, tough she did ripped the shirt underneath it.

She pulled his earring with her teeth, wrapped her legs around his waist and drew him to her roughly.

He corresponded the gesture making their hips collide harshly.

Emma’s moan mixed with Killian’s groan.

"I hate you so much I could kill you right now" she snapped.

And perhaps she was lying. A little.

She lifted their hips together again, hard.

"You kill me." he assured with husky voice. "I kill you." he bit the beginning of one of her breast. "And we love it."

And perhaps he was saying the truth.

Hands found their way inside her blouse and under all the leather, and they scratched her ribs until they left red marks.

"I hate you" she repeated, moving the knife’s blade over his back.

Killian growled as he felt the thin line of blood opening in his skin. He took her knife and threw it to the side. He lifted her body, with so much craving she let out a moan of pleasure, and sat her down on the nearest place, which turned out to be his desk.

"You can hate me all your life."

And that was, definitely, a lie; from both of them.

·

·

·

A legend spread around all the Realms.

A legend everyone assured to have witnessed.

A legend that reached to the highest Kings and their Armies.

A legend of two ships always sailing the waters of the night together.

Of two flags at the mast that gathered the most loyal crews in all the seas.

Of two crews that, in truth, were only one; and two captains that, in truth, were only one.

Of a love so deep it needed no ‘I love you’ among the blood in their swords and the wounds in their skin.

The legend spoke of a long, scarlet red coat, stained with the blood of her victims.

The legend spoke of enthralling eyes: the last thing his victims saw -it was said they had wanted to pretend it was the blue of the sky, but the cold of the color would not allow it.

 _The Swan_  and  _The Ice of the High Seas_.

The  _Queen_  and the  _King_  of the blue domains.

But, then again, for them, they were nothing but two pirates devoid of honor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://stkaley.tumblr.com/post/73239375486)

**Author's Note:**

> Also on [Tumblr](http://stkaley.tumblr.com/post/71124262965)


End file.
